From around the Web
- IxDA posts videos from a recent conference Very Useful
- Frog Design’s Robert Fabricant: Designers are in the Behavior Business (Design is not just about “making stuff”.)
- WordPress invites users to perform usability testing
Nick Fincks’ top UX books. (link)
I own two books on his list already (Don Norman’s Design of Everyday Things & Dan Brown’s Communicating Design). To Nick’s list I would add two books: Nudge by Thaler & Susstein and Designing for People by Henry Dreyfuss.
From the twitterverse
- Make your commerce website usable by breaking it into three steps.
- Cheapskate’s Guide to Usability
- A 14-point usability checklist. A Tweak a Day Convinces Visitors to Stay
The concept of User Experience is becoming pervasive. People in all fields are learning how to create better usability. More people are designing websites, and doing a good job at it. Information is ubiquitous, open, and accessible. What’s to motivate people to hire a dedicated UX designer?
A UX pro goes above and beyond what’s listed in these articles. They advocate for usability in the toughest of design environments. A pro works under the constraints of a tight budget to make quick tweaks, but they can also seamlessly integrate usability through the entire development life-cycle.
When I was obsessed with poker, I visited discussion forums to improve my game. In this highly competitive environment, giving tips and pointers was frowned upon. The last thing people want is for someone to help your competition, which they called “teaching the fish”.
In a way they are right: by bringing people’s competencies up, the skill gap narrows and your competitive edge shrinks. More work and more knowledge is required to eek out profits. The best thing professionals (in poker or in UX) can do is to read up on what’s now “common knowledge” and stay ahead of the field. It’s what I do everyday.